-Elizabeth: ¡Feliz Cumpleaños Sarah Nelson!

Sept 13, 2012

Sarah and I

Since we got to Spain we have been trying to adapt to the culture, people, food, our schedules, ambient and at the same time we have been trying to get to know as many people as we can in the program. A lot of this can be somewhat overwhelming and to be honest I am so glad that by now most of this is out of the way, I am not done learning or adapting to the culture, or the food or the people but I am glad that I have a nice roommate who is nice to me and who I can talk to without stressing about whether or not she is going to listen to me or just ignore me. Anyway, a person that I have grown attached to is Sarah Nelson.

Sarah is an interesting character, we have this theory that she is the "Caucasian" version of me, and that my friends is a scary thought. She claims I am the Hispanic version of her, we are so similar, we have mad methods that lead to similar goals and I feel comfortable around her and vice versa. We are both currently enrolled in a class together but we have talked about our core classes and it turns out we will have a literature class together at the University; we are totally looking forward to this. We have also talked about planning a few trips together and this is something nice because I personally don’t like to travel in big groups and Sarah and I seem to be interested in the same things and we will see how that goes.

Yesterday, we found out today is Sarah's birthday, she is turning 22 and we are extremely excited about this because I think it’s a good excuse to get together with the rest of the students in the program and go out on a school night. I have taken the initiative and created an event via Facebook and invited everyone from the program. I think it’s important that we all get together and celebrate Sarah's birthday because she is a student in the program, we are all away from our family and friends and I feel that since we have all been together since we got here earlier this month we are each other's family!

We made it clear we all wanted to celebrate Sarah’s birthday and make her happy but at the same time we don’t want to stay out too late because we all have classes early in the morning the next and midterms are this Friday so it is very important we have fun but not go too crazy. Dianna, Susana and I got together before dinner and we went to El Corte Ingles which is a huge mall and we went looking for a birthday card for Sarah. Once we got the card we went to our homes, had dinner and then got together to walk to the Cien Montaditos which is a bar near the Center of Sevilla by the Cathedral, that’s where we would start the Party!

Sarah, Dianna, Myself, Chris, Laura and Susana

Susana, Colleen, Laura, Chris, Kasey
Camille, Maria, Dianna, Sarah and Elisa

When we got there we were happy to see a lot of the students had made it and we passed around the birthday card and everyone got to sign it and when we felt the time was right, which was about two or three sangrias later we gave the card to Sarah and she loved it!

Birthday Girl!

A lot of us decided to go home around midnight while some of us decided to head out to other bars across the river and keep on celebrating Sarah’s birthday. We went to this bar where they had free Sangria for the ladies; we thought it would be really nice to enjoy a free drink in honor of Sarah’s birthday. The bar was really nice, there was a bull in the back room, there were some pool tables and there was a beer pong tournament going on. We thought this was very cool. We met up with more buddies there and it was really nice that some of our classmates had invited their intercambios because that way we got to know more of them and it was nice to speak some English. Speaking of that, we are not allowed to speak English, we signed this contract and everyone has to speak Spanish, which is nice and Sarah’s Spanish is excellente! As the free Sangrias and birthday drinks kept on getting poured for the birthday girl we all thought it would be cool to take pictures with the bull in the backroom and that is exactly what we did. Some of these pictures are hilarious others we were just being silly!

Colleen, Myself, Dianna, Maria, the Birthday Girl and the BULL!

Maria

Ted made a new friend last night.

This is as close as i will ever get to "riding" a bull.

Sarah trying to replicate my pose, she used a step to get up there.

Reed having fun :)

After a few sangrias we were best friends.

Grant took the bull by the horns.

To all of this, we celebrated Sarah’s 22^nd birthday to the fullest, I was one of the last people to leave and I left around 3 almost 4 in the morning, I didn’t even realize how late it was, and that is great because it means I was having a really good time :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH!